In writing down various types of sentences, you have probably discoveredthat many times, their content is focused on one major idea. Putting sentenceswith related ideas into a larger unit is what paragraph writing is allabout.
Example: Hawaiian recipes often include a rich variety of colors and textures. In the preceding sentence, the subject is recipes; the verbis include, and the controlling idea is a rich variety of colors and textures.
Pitfalls To Sidestep
In composing your topic sentence, you need to sidestep the following pitfalls.
Avoid a Dead End Fact. It has no controlling idea.
It provides no direction.
Example:
The lychee is a tropical fruit that is surrounded by a red woody shell that cannot be eaten.
Avoid a Future Based Statement.
There are no concrete facts to support one.
Your facts should be drawn from past or present time frames.
Example:
By the year 2,000, everyone visiting the Hawaiian islands will ask for innovative recipes that use the lychee fruit as a primary ingredient.Avoid a Question.
No direction is give to the writer or the reader.
A question often leads to rambling, uncontrolled writing.
Factual clauses often lend themselves to a logical ordering of information.
An order of time should be followed which moves the reader from the earliest date to the latest one or vice versa if there is a cluster of dates like 1987, 1964, and 1994.
An order of space should be followed from west to east or from north to south if you have a cluster of places that contains important facts.
Important Reminders